Candito Becomes Big Fish in Huge Pond

Coming from a career spent mostly at Boston-based New England Financial (NEF), Anthony Candito is accustomed to running the entire IT operation and interacting with all of the business units.

However, now that NEF is part of New York-based MetLife ($421.4 billion in assets) and Candito has been promoted—from CIO of NEF and senior vice president of MetLife—to chief information officer of individual business at MetLife, he is not able to operate on the same level in such a large organization. "In the smaller environment, I was able to have a holistic view of the business and I really had to focus on customer relationships," says Candito. "I had the entire company serving me and I had to deal with all of the units. The combination of seeing the business from front to backand being able to work with everyone—that was an invaluable lesson. Now I am constantly struggling with the scope" of MetLife, he adds.

Influenced by his tenure at NEF, Candito is planning to operate closely with the business and IT sides to make sure projects are implemented correctly. "One of the things I am mandating is developing systems according to an architectural blueprint and an IT architecture," he says. "I am also actively pursuing an IT/business partnership model." The model will support the vision of the IT people and the vision of the business people at the same time and will reach the same goals, he says. "That is the most effective way for IT and business to work together."

Greg MacSweeney is editorial director of InformationWeek Financial Services, whose brands include Wall Street & Technology, Bank Systems & Technology, Advanced Trading, and Insurance & Technology. View Full Bio